Presently we went home to dinner, which was served for us by Cicely Crump. After dinner, while Mrs. Esther dozed, Cicely told me her history. Her father, she said, had been a substantial tradesman in Cheapside, and though little of stature, was in his youth a man of the most determined courage and resolution. When only just out of his apprenticeship he fell in love with a beautiful young lady named Jenny Medlicott (daughter of the same Alderman Medlicott whose ruin brought poor Mrs. Esther to destruction): as he knew that he could never get the consent of the alderman, being poor and of obscure birth, and knowing besides that all is fair in love, this lad of mettle represented himself to his nymph as a young gentleman of the Temple, son of a country squire. In this disguise he persuaded her to run away with him, and they were married. But when they returned to London they found that the alderman was ruined, and gone off his head. Therefore they separated, the lady going to Virginia with Lady Eardesley, mother of the young lord now at Epsom, and the husband going back to the shop. After the death of poor Jenny he married again. "And," said Cicely, "though my mother is no gentlewoman, one cannot but feel that she might have been Miss Jenny Medlicott herself had things turned out differently. And that makes all of us hold up our heads. And as for poor father, he never forgot his first wife, and was always pleased to relate how he ran away with her all the way to Scotland, armed to the teeth, and ready, for her sake, to fight a dozen highwaymen. Such a resolute spirit he had!" Then Nancy Levett came, bringing with her a milliner, Mrs. Bergamot. "Kitty," she cried, "I cannot rest for thinking of your first ball, and I have brought you Mrs. Bergamot to advise. My dear, you _must_ be well dressed." Then she whispered: "Do you want money, dear? I have some." I told her I had as much as a hundred and twenty guineas, at which she screamed with delight. "Kitty!" she cried again, clasping my hands. "A hundred guineas! a hundred guineas! and twenty more! My dear, that odd twenty, that poor overflowing of thy rich measure, is the utmost I could get for this season at the Wells. Oh! happy, happy girl, to have such a face, such a shape, such eyes, such hair, such hands and feet, and a hundred and twenty guineas to set all off!" She sat down, clasped her hands, and raised her eyes to Heaven as if in thankfulness. I think I see her now, the little dainty merry maid, so arch, so apt, sitting before me with a look which might be of envy or of joy. She had eyes so bright, a mouth so little, dimples so cunning, a cheek so rosy and a chin so rounded, that one could not choose but love her. "Miss Pleydell," she said to the milliner, "has not brought all her things from London. You must get what she wants at once, for Monday's ball. Now, let us see."